1eStar: School traffic is the enemy. If someone was brave enough to tackle that issue, Auckland's traffic congestion woes could become eased. The tunnels/motorways etc is just catchup to past delays in infrastructure growth.

It's a sad situation when we are talking about altering the entire school routine to fix a traffic problem.

Imho the trains are insanely slow. How many hundred billions would it take to underground all of them? Imo it would be worth it for the gains. All of our train journeys are longer than the corresponding car trip.

gzt: Imho the trains are insanely slow. How many hundred billions would it take to underground all of them? Imo it would be worth it for the gains. All of our train journeys are longer than the corresponding car trip.

how would undergrounding them make them faster?, its still the same train going the same speed just underground. They need to remove some level crossings but that from a safety perspective not a speed one.

our trains are slow because of the way they operate at platforms and the fact they rely on the train manager to open and close the doors. they normally have dwell times of 30-40 seconds, , it adds up over a 10-12 station trip. overseas they have this down to under 20 seconds with the doors being automatic.

the frequency isn't there because of the switchgear/signalling they used.

gzt: Imho the trains are insanely slow. How many hundred billions would it take to underground all of them? Imo it would be worth it for the gains. All of our train journeys are longer than the corresponding car trip.

how would undergrounding them make them faster?, its still the same train going the same speed just underground. They need to remove some level crossings but that from a safety perspective not a speed one.

our trains are slow because of the way they operate at platforms and the fact they rely on the train manager to open and close the doors. they normally have dwell times of 30-40 seconds, , it adds up over a 10-12 station trip. overseas they have this down to under 20 seconds with the doors being automatic.

the frequency isn't there because of the switchgear/signalling they used.

The switch gear isn't the real issue, nor is the station time. The biggest problem with increasing frequency is Newmarket, which is the problem CRL is trying to solve. The network can function a significantly higher frequency if required, if the tracks caccipty was there. The Newmarket bottleneck screws this up.

The stop time at the stations effects the end to end time, not so much the frequency.

gzt: Imho the trains are insanely slow. How many hundred billions would it take to underground all of them? Imo it would be worth it for the gains. All of our train journeys are longer than the corresponding car trip.

how would undergrounding them make them faster?, its still the same train going the same speed just underground.

Spending billions upon billions includes new trains. On the other hand undergrounding is not needed for suburban to city trains. A fast monorail would do the job, and fly over existing crossings.

While some congestion will be moved. I think on the whole having the infrastructure rather than not having it is a good thing. From the shore it means you can go directly down the western (either from greenhithe bridge or harbor bridge) and then over the new roads onto that waterview bypass. It will make getting out to the airport and some other parts of Auckland a lot better.

We should be considering starting another project, using the boarer again, hell they paid enough for it already.

I just got back from Brisbane yesterday. Their roadways are fantastic. Their bridge is 6 lanes each way. Obviously their population is higher. But because of the layout of Auckland the challenges are somewhat different.

Short Version - it completes a missing link in Aucklands Motorway system which will help during certain traffic scenarios - but it will not "fix" congestion by itself as it is only one part of a larger strategy to try and address Auckland's transport infrastructure issues.

gzt: Imho the trains are insanely slow. How many hundred billions would it take to underground all of them? Imo it would be worth it for the gains. All of our train journeys are longer than the corresponding car trip.

how would undergrounding them make them faster?, its still the same train going the same speed just underground.

Spending billions upon billions includes new trains. On the other hand undergrounding is not needed for suburban to city trains. A fast monorail would do the job, and fly over existing crossings.

You mean like the one in Sydney that got pulled out a few years ago and was replaced by trams?

I still think that AKL council should copy Melbourne public transport infrastructure.

yes it's not perfect, but it's 1000% better of what we have now. AKL will grow rapidly, and not having inner subbers trams - killer deal.

Imaging moving from Grey Lynn to CBD, New Market, Kingsland, Dominion rd. Try to use bus at the moment.

+ extend western rail to te atatu and Helensville + to north like Wellsford maybe?

Yeah, Melbourne is great city to get around on public transport - and not very many motorways.

The solution IMHO is to remove barriers to intensive subdivision along the rail routes (Swanson, Waitakere, Kumue etc and equivalents out South). For instance blanket zoning all land 2 km either side of a railway residential. Developers will soon be offering up land to extend the rail network across their land, solving the acquisition & consent problems, and the transport can then precede urbanisation - like it should, and unlike it presently does in AK.

Off peak to medium flows: it will be brilliant, and will provide a decent alternate if there is a blockage on the southern between the city and Manukau.

On peak: it will bring the Northwestern from it knees, to flat on it's back - city bound in the AM and West bound in the PM. Hope I'm wrong....

Yep! The worst thing is that it wasn't meant to provide a link to the CBD from the South - the concept was a link between the South and West. The tale goes that then transport minister Joyce wanted a quicker trip into the CBD from the airport and insisted on having an East-bound exit for northbound traffic in the tunnel.

I think that unless they can upgrade the capacity on the North-Western past Western Springs, then it shouldn't have that North-Eastern off-ramp